


Blue Job

by countessofbiscuit



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Armor Kink, Buckle Up Bucket Sluts, Dialogue, F/M, Frottage, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Let's Play Dress Up, Masturbation, Orgasm Delay/Denial, PWP|Porn with Plastoid, Post-Episode: s03ep22 Wookie Hunt, Restraint, Sliding into Second Base, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:36:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/countessofbiscuit/pseuds/countessofbiscuit
Summary: Sure, Phase 1 holds up, he won’t let anyone knock it, but boy does Rex have fond memories of the day Phase 2 came into his life.





	Blue Job

**Author's Note:**

> Rexsoka Ft. The Usual Torrents + Twix (NCO Remix)  
> “100% Self-Indulgent Twattery” — _Rolling Stone_

The enhanced photoreceptors of the RA-7 droid struggle to fully absorb the mayhem and disorder unfolding before him in the hangar. Nowhere in his specialized programming does the scene at all align with any one of his thousand definitions of “protocol,” but his processors whirr desperately in the attempt. The distressed sound reaches the audio sensors of his clone superior, CT-2666. 

“You’d be better off powering down, Pine,” says the quartermaster, who insists on calling AP-9R by this illogical moniker as much as he insists on being called “Twix” in return. In another unnecessary human display of reassurance, he grasps AP-9R’s servo-grip and applies some pressure. “Save yourself the distress. It’ll be a little while before we can restore order and even contemplate an inventory. I’m sorry, buddy. I know you were looking forward to this.” 

An understatement, to be sure. Millennia of computing advancements that had brought AP-9R to the pinnacle of automated data and logistics excellence have been rendered obsolete by two thousand undisciplined tube-grown organics. They'd descended upon freighters, pried open dunnage, rifled through their contents, and tossed loose fill left and right before he could even scan two containers. 

He hasn’t short-circuited, but AP-9R’s vocabulator is inoperative all the same. He wants to query whether his operating system might be better respected amongst an army of droids, but AP-9R isn’t programmed for hypotheticals. Before he can express something mildly traitorous, CT-2666 does him the kindness of switching him off.

To an inventory droid, even to a rather mellow quartermaster like Twix, the scene _would_ qualify as absolute carnage. An entire regiment of clone troopers—some in full armor, some in blacks, some in fatigues, and a conspicuous few in strange combinations of non-regulation sweats, civvies, and lace that say they hadn’t come from straight from their _own_ bunks—had swarmed the southeast loading bay after some _di’kut_ in procurement leaked the ASN for a long-awaited shipment from Kamino. Word got round in awed, reverential tones that “second generation” was due to arrive at oh-three-hundred. What with the general carefree spirit of a regiment enjoying its first official furlough in months, any hope of properly distributing the new kit had been dashed. 

Now most of the 501st are frolicking in a sea of styrocubes, snapping holoselfies, and testing the ergonomics of the new plates by recording some of the more adventurous brothers performing acrobatic feats worthy of the Jedi—well, maybe the baby ones anyway. Sticky and his band of QMC hardasses had finally gotten the Kaminoans to at least slap-and-ship according to a system that made sense to beings who couldn’t fucking _see_ in ultraviolet, and now the troopers were shooting it all to shit. Poor Sticky, at least Pine could power down… 

It’d been the height of folly, in Twix’s opinion, to assume the scheduled hour would stop even the most exhausted troopers from racing to get their hands on the latest issue armor. It’d been the pride and boast of ARCs for months. As Torrent’s QM, Twix rarely saw action, but even he’s excited at the prospect of lighter plates that are, you know,configured for human anatomy. Leave it to the longnecks to spend more time and effort on psychological fuckery than comfortably kitting out the final product; but “comfort” probably wasn’t a word to be found on the, what, _decade-old_ planning bill? 

Twix finds himself contemplating what his own purchase order might have looked like—oh the fictitious credits he would pay!—as he wheels Pine to the nearest charging station. He wedges the droid into an empty power port. He's careful to adjust his arms across his midsection in the preferred configuration, however much Pine might scoff at the suggestion that he _had_ a preference. 

Rounding a larty back towards barracks, he stumbles upon the Captain standing in halfsies, his elbows akimbo, his fingers knitted behind his blond head, apparently surveying the chaos. 

He’d been hard to find lately and even harder to talk to, what with the Commander missing and all. It weighed on all of them, unbalancing the spirit of Torrent in particular. But the Captain seemed to take it like a personal failing of some kind, and that just makes Twix feel awkward. She’d only been gone three rotations, no doubt she’d turn up. 

“Sir,” Twix acknowledges in passing. 

For a moment, it seems the Captain hasn’t heard him and Twix can live with that. The captain’s eyes are dead ahead. He looks more than a little dead inside. But then his shoulders loll in Twix’s direction, bringing his blond head along with them, and he comes alive. 

“Lieutenant!” he shouts, halting Twix in his stride. 

“Yes sir?”

The Captain brings his arms down, deliberately crossing them over his chest as he approaches. He listlessly kicks his way through foam cubes with the same exhaustion that’s tugging on his face. 

“I know better than to blame you for this,” he begins. He inclines his furrowed brow over Twix’s shoulder towards the center of the hangar and the general maelstrom. “Hells, I’ve been here over an hour myself, turning over just about every crate I’ve come across. Because I can’t find it.” 

“Find what—”

Oh. Wait.

Twix suddenly feels like he’s got a duracrete sandwich in his gut. He _knew_ there was something he should’ve been a bit more anxious about than Pine frying himself. And the whereabouts of a custom hybrid helmet—featuring all the HUD and filtration upgrades of phase two, but without the exaggerated lenses and retaining the heft of phase one, as per specifications—is _definitely_ something to be worried about. 

“ _Please_ tell me it’s on the manifest,” pleads the Captain, taking Twix by the shoulders with a grave expression. 

Twix unclips a datapad, fingers dancing wildly in search of the right file, as anxiety beads into sweat on the back of his neck. “Well, it was on the last requisition order that Commander Tano approved, I swear—” _Shit_. 

The Captain hisses—hopefully at the obfuscation and not at the mention of their missing officer?—and shoves off towards the nearest squad of troopers. 

This bunch have clearly tired of running amok and are now content to sit cross-legged round a small tub of blue paint. They take turns dipping brushes, or even just fingers, into it as they personalize their plates. Twix isn’t sure if new kit means new regs, and if this perversion of the original coloring scheme will still be allowed. But even he knows that if top brass expect callused, scratched, stained, and hardened ground-pounders to revert to shiny status in exchange for better armor, they’d have another thing coming. 

Without preamble, the captain seizes an unadorned helmet from the frankly gratuitous pile of plates and shit this squad has collected. “Barracks, boys,” he says to them, shoving his thumb in the direction of Neutron quarters. “Or it’ll be your noses in paint when Doppler drops you for an extra hundred at drill”—he makes a show of glancing at his chrono—“in approximately two-point-five hours.” 

He spins back round to Twix and plops the new bucket on his head with the same one-handed ease they’d all mastered. 

“Don’t make me wear this, Twix,” comes the captain’s voice through the improved annunciator. It's still gravelly as fuck, like his throat is lined with space dust and testosterone, as befits the GAR’s finest, but definitely more comprehensible. He gestures rudely at the visor. “I can’t see a damn thing.” 

Twix swallows hard. “I’ll find it, sir.” 

“You better, or I swear on Jango’s bones it’ll be your fucking face that gets scanned next.” 

It’s not the first time someone’s taken inspiration from Twix’s tattoo to make a rude threat, but coming from the rather even-tempered captain, it’s certainly the most intimidating. 

The captain turns heel towards barracks and, as if to prove his point, half stumbles over a small crate. With more violence than he’d shown the foam cubes, he kicks it hard enough to punt it a good few meters away and stalks off. 

Twix throws his hands up in the air. “And they call us the box-kickers!”

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rex removes the stupid bucket and clips it to his belt once his eyes stop watering. The crate had been heavier than it looked and he may have _actually_ broken a toe. It’s as good an excuse as any to indulge in his “nasty” caff habit, so he starts to stride … okay _oww—walk carefully_ in the direction of the mess. 

Like he’s told Kix a thousand times, at least it’s not stims or spice or that smoky leafage Rostu squad’s been trafficking lately. When half-shift headaches look like they’re gonna kill him sooner than his perennial anxiety about the wellbeing of his General and Commander, and the responsibility for a regiment of supersoldiers (now clad in subpar plates!) who keep forgetting that _he_ always goes first so _they_ don’t go down first, then he’ll stop. 

Until that day, he’s gonna have his fucking caff. 

Especially now, when the General is a panicked wreck on account of the Unthinkable Crisis. It flashes red across his mind every couple of thoughts, as if the datafile he’d stared at too hard and too long is seared into his retinas.

 

Name: Tano, Ahsoka

Branch: GAR (Jedi Padawan)

Grade: Commander (Brevet)

Unit: 501st Regiment, 7th Sky Corps

Status: MIA, Felucia

 

_Mern. Isk. Aurek._

Skywalker hadn’t added the “presumed dead” suffix that usually followed—which would’ve been melancholy if it weren’t so fuckdamn ironic. Just a few weeks ago he’d put Fives in correctional for violently demanding they remove those same words from Echo’s file. But it went without saying that the General would have to embrace the Commander’s lifeless body himself, and then leave her corpse suspended in bacta for a week before he’d ever concede what some of the other Jedi seemed all too ready to believe. 

… which is beyond confusing, because, hello? _The Force_? Didn’t it … _thrum_ (yes, that’s the word she always used) through living things? And if anyone could still feel the Commander, surely the General could. _The Chosen One_? 

He used to smirk at that. That's what they used to call Boba, in the same oily tone Kenobi used. 

But chosen for _what_? To defeat the Separatists? To ruin Kenobi’s day? To miraculously crash every other ship he piloted? To throw him off cliffs? Once he heard Kenobi mockingly address Skywalker like that one too many times, he'd actually remembered to ask. Skywalker tried to shrug it off. But when pressed he just said, “The Council thinks I’m the embodiment of some ancient Jedi Prophecy 'cause I’m like, half-Force, half-Human” and it had blown Rex’s goddamn mind. 

So yeah, until General “I Bleed Grit, Plasma, and Midichlorians” Skywalker says she’s gone, he’s never gonna lose hope. 

Doesn’t make missing her any easier. 

Another standard month of this and he’s not only gonna be buried under datapads—Ahsoka did more than her fair share of regimental admin for a Temple brat whose part-time job should’ve been meditating under waterfalls and pondering the meaning of the universe, not fighting in a galactic war—he’s also gonna fucking combust with worry and guilt. 

According to an extensive survey cited in his clinical cultural-awareness modules, Togruta were the fourth most physiologically-pleasing people in the entire galaxy. As a young and attractive member of that species, she was probably slated for some nefarious end. Even if—and it was a big if—her capture had been politically-motivated, and not the work of some opportunistic _hut’unn_. Being a Force-sensitive to boot probably did more harm than good, if they’d found out. Her lightsabers weren’t retrieved from Felucia—he’d had his men _crawling_ over that five-klick area for hours—so that was all too likely

 _Not good enough, Rex_.

Didn’t he know it. Once he’d chewed out Sinker, Comet, and Boost for fucking losing her— ‘covering your flank’ doesn’t mean you leave her at the bottom of a wall while _nine_ of you run off into a Case Yellow _at worst_ , in what fucking sim did it pay to just abandon the rearguard?—he’d graduated onto berating himself. He laid awake at night without the warm press of her back against his, the standard nightmares replaced by Skywalker’s words repeating in his head like a faulty holorecord. 

_Not good enough, Rex._

He’d always had her six. Until the one time he didn’t. 

Damn. He really needs to stop thinking about this. Maybe he should lay off the caff and start shooting millaflower like those sad pit-dwelling scope dopes in the Navy. 

But caff’s the only small comfort he’s got to hand and it’ll have to last him through drill. He turns into quarters to grab one of his few personal possessions, unexpectedly acquired during an epic intercompany white thune exchange (sponsored by Senator Amidala). When the _one_ Torrent mutie unwraps an oversized mug stamped “Blondes Have More Fun,” of course he’s gonna be unanimously retired from the game to peals of laughter. 

Which had turned into cheers when the Commander proved the point by taking his flushed cheeks in her hands and kissing him straight on the mouth. 

He’d put it down to the bubblezap he’d tasted on her lips, but _still_.

It’s dark in the bunkroom and mostly empty; he can’t make out any snores over his uneven metallic footfalls, but there’s a task lamp on in the far corner closest to his rack and he catches the tail end of some gossip as he approaches.

_“So Fives tells the guy, ‘Look, I was hatched in a tube, I’d never even met a girl before, how was I supposed to know she was your wife?’”_

_“How many times is he gonna spew that osik?”_

_“Until the day it stops working.”_

Hardcase, Tup, Kix, Jesse, Coric, Appo, and a handful of select shinies are hanging off bunks, or sitting cross-legged on the floor, propped up against beds and brothers; they’ve got two tubes of blue paint between them and they’re all decorating their new plates, the shinies watching in admiration. 

The chatter doesn’t dissolve into silence at his approach, a worrying trend the men had first fallen into around Fives and later extended to him. It hurt, yeah. But growing beyond an emotional constipation born of round-the-chrono training, a blinkered conception of the galaxy and their place within it, and no vocabulary to express intense psychological distress, was taking them all a while—even with the support of the Jedi, whose policy of detachment was really _not_ as airtight as they’d been trained to believe. 

And that policy failed in both directions. Spectacularly so in his case, professionalism be damned. 

“Hey, Captain,” Hardcase says to him as he opens his locker, “there’s a surprise for you in the staff office.”

That gives him pause. Surprises from Hardcase usually involve detonations, unexpected nudity, or alarmingly loud music. Sometimes all three, if the universe was really out to crush his cocksock. It already feels like one of those days—the ass-over-early stampede of troopers to the hangar, the missing helmet— 

Wait. 

“A helmet?” he asks. This day might get marginally better. But if someone had found his helmet, which he hoped had been fairly obviously labelled FOR THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF CAPTAIN REX ON PAIN OF TERMINATION as he’d instructed, they would have just put it on his bunk. He glances at his bunk again, in case he’d missed it when he’d had Ahsoka’s kiss on the brain. 

Someone snickers. “Uh … maybe,” drawls Hardcase. 

So help him, if he finds _any_ glitterdust on his new bucket, the entire company will spend the remainder of their blessed leave in Twix’s outfit, stacking crates, making multiple inventories of pins, socks, and ration bars, and picking up each and every one of those foam cubes by hand. 

Yup, that’s definitely Jesse giggling. _Shit_.

“Uh huh. Just … don’t get paint on the floor and clean up when you finish,” he says, gesturing with the mug at their little craft circle as he makes for the door. 

“Yes sir!” 

Someone—it sounds like Kix—mutters “you too, sir” and he … doesn’t want to know. But the staff room—closet, _box_ , really—shares a wall with the barracks, so he’s about to find out as he rounds the corner and palms open the door. 

He doesn’t immediately step inside because, again, _Hardcase_. He half expects something to spring out from the deeply shadowed room or a kinetic sensor to activate an ear-splitting rendition of the latest house holohit that’ll take something like five droids and a blaster to deactivate. He’s a captain, he _learns_ from experience. But nothing alarming occurs. There’s no point standing out here like a spooked nuna, so in he goes, fumbling with his left hand for the light, hoping for nothing more than a new bucket and no increase in the number of datapads—

Before he can find the switch, there’s a _thwump_ and a _weight_ on his upper back, suddenly, like it’s dropped from the ceiling. But he can’t see anything because numerous appendages are not only gripping his ribcage, they’ve also wrapped around his head, and— 

_Fuck_. 

Instinct kicks in. His mind sweeps through an impressive number of close-combat sims, memories, and SOPs in a microsecond, all while he’s cursing himself, Hardcase, and the whole fuckdamn 212th’s critter-thieving influence on his men. 

At least, he’s pretty sure it’s a _what_ and not a _who._ Sithspit, what sort of Jedi-fuckery—? 

Oh. 

It's only a microsecond more before the difference between crushing whatever it is with ninety kilos of muscle and bone roped with deadly intent, and, freezing up in defiance of eight years of hard combat training, comes down to a stifled laugh. 

And an unmistakable aroma, earthy yet sweet, that has an entirely different effect on his hindbrain. 

He’s not a six-year-old cadet anymore, living in fear of a KE-8’s punitive electricity, but a shock courses through his body all the same. It rouses him just enough to set his mug down on the desk. Then he prods the hairless, alien limbs that are _not_ wrapped around his skull—a panicked assumption—but stick out from his face, and end with two small, bony hands slapped over his eyes. He laces his fingers between those of the prankster and draws them down over his nose and mouth. He breathes her in and exhales her name with a shudder. 

“Oh, Soka.”

If it didn’t mean maybe smacking her head into a pile of datapads, he would’ve fallen to his knees. Something stronger, _warmer_ than shock and relief pulses through him.

“Surprise! D’ya miss me, Rexster?” she chirps from behind, pressing a cool lek and a soft peck against his cheek.

She shakes off his hands to entwine her arms around his neck, _actually_ threatening his windpipe now. But this particular assailant could kill him, could trap the air in his chest that’s already fit to burst with elation/joy/delight and all the other words in Basic he’d learned for feelings he wasn’t meant to concern himself with, and he’d probably thank her.

She’s roosting around his shoulders like a gangly reptavian; the position makes reciprocal displays of affection difficult. As much as he wants to fold her up in his arms and drink in this bounty of feelings, this knowledge that she’s really here, safe and sound, he has to settle for giving her knees a little friendly squeeze. 

She’s not wearing leggings. Interesting.

“More than you know, sir. I’ve filed enough documents in triplicate to crash a Sullustan encryption server,” he says, trying to match her casually cheerful tone as she slithers around to his front. 

This makes affection easier, but it also means the natural place for his awkward hands is … _no_ , _not cupping her ass, you excitable piece of rankweed_. He firmly grabs his own wrists to remove all temptation and supports her bare bottom on his forearms. Only, it’s not completely bare. She must be wearing shorts—he can feel where the hem has rucked up under his arms and he _isn’t_ thinking about it. Fuck, what was he saying? 

He grasps for the trails of his vaped thought and ambles over to the lightswitch. “You’re the best surprise. But where in the nine Corellian hells have you been? What happened? I’ve already had those Wolfpack idiots scraping their bellies for leaving you so exposed. Did the General—” 

As the dingy overhead light he keeps meaning to replace flickers on, she pops two fingers over his mouth. “Shhh. It was just a small outpost of Trandoshan sleemos. Nothing some Padawans and a Wookie couldn’t handle.” 

_Trandoshans?!_ Hunt his Commander for bloodsport?! Those sadistic fucks, wait till he and the General rock up, it’ll be their scaly hides pinned to the wall of the 501st gym. Assuming this little fiery nexu of a Jedi left any of them alive. Doubtful. Hopefully she mauled at least one of them with her fucking fangs— _nope_ , definitely _not_ acknowledging what a … thrilling mental image that is. 

He's also _not_ acknowledging that his codpiece is feeling a touch snug. He’s just … overwhelmed. He’s got an armful of his physiologically-pleasing Jedi and anything with a pulse that smells like baked earth is bound to get a reaction out of this lab-grown lifeform. Conversation, that’s what he supposed to be doing. 

“Hells, we thought the Seppies were holding you for ransom or some shit and it was gonna be Citadel two-point-oh. Were you alone? How long were you out there? When d’you get back?” 

He shifts her onto one arm and clears some room among the datapads to deposit her onto the desk. He unclips the helmet from his belt and … tries to diffuse a little. Not even good ole’ Generation One can stop shrapnel, but thank fuck it can hide a stiffie. For all that she’s been opportunistically bunking with him for months, he’s managed to keep his kad from betraying him. And he isn't about to let it until _she_ decides they can … level up. 

“You wouldn’t cheat the boys out of a good mess story, would you?” 

“No sir,” he replies, dragging the chair from the wall to straddle it back-to-front, cuisses bracketing the bars of the back support. “But your stories, like the General’s, always improve in the telling.” 

“Hey!”

He raises his hands. “Fine. Save it. What are you doing here anyway, kid? I mean, seeing you again is the best thing to happen in weeks, but you must be running on fumes.”

She blows an exhausted zoochberry and drops her chin into her hands, resting her elbows on her bare knees. It brings her face almost level with his, so close he inhales the warmth of her fruity-sweet breath. Good, it means she’s eaten something pleasant and homemade recently, not her usual field nosh of critters washed down with Skywalker’s sludgy caff. That said, her lekku look plush enough ... she definitely hadn’t _starved_ in whatever hellish jungle she’d escaped from.

“I tell ya, Rexster,” she begins, “there’s no rest for the weary. I don’t know anyone else who has _two_ Masters, and in the middle of a fraggin’ war too. I come back to the Temple, gross and beat, and it’s all _meditate on this unexpected mission, you must,_ and Obi-Mom’s nagging me to chronicle the whole episode for Madame Nu’s records, and, yeah, Anakin won’t stop hugging me and trying to feed me Padmé’s camby tarts, but then it’s _by the way, Snips, the regiment’s getting new kit, can you have a draft of the updated regs by reveille tomorrow, I’ve pulled Senator-security detail at this snooze-worthy party, woe is me_ , and well. Here I am.” She’s been gesticulating wildly during this speech, so he doesn’t notice she’s doing the Force-grab thing until a datapad whizzes past his ear and smacks into her palm. “Kit regs. And to see the boys, obviously. Some party out there.” 

He can’t help smiling. Fuck, he’s missed her and her mouth—the rambling tales and laughs that come out, not—

Well hells, why lie. Yes, her lips too, dark and warm like they’ve been dusted in caff, and how they’ve tasted of everything from meiloo-salsa to blood (that was _wild_ ) in the months since the bubblezap kiss. But right now he’s just content to watch them, reacquainting himself with the way they twist her pretty face into all sorts of lively expressions.

“Let me do those, sir,” he says, tossing out a hand. “They won’t make a drop of sense anyway if a zombie writes them.”

“I’m not _that_ useless, I did catch a nap. Bariss was a real pal and offered to ‘meditate’ with me and report back to Master Yoda. Pretty sure she just napped too, but she’s a lot better at shielding than me. Anyway, I’m not here to dump my work on you. Obi-Wan will know you did it if it’s perfect on the first try.”

“What does General Kenobi care?” 

She squawks like he’s said something really outrageous. “You think _Anakin_ checks my assignments?! Hah! No. It’s Obi-Wan that actually _reads_ all my mission reports, all my essays, all my meditation notes line-by-kriffin’-line. And he’ll sit down and watch me rewrite these if he thinks you did them.”

It’s hard to argue with her. He’d advised from the beginning that the best thing for the scrappy, shiny officer would be to integrate into the regimental system as much as possible, to learn from _experience_ , if she and the other Padawans really couldn’t be shipped off to Kamino for a flash course in weapons handling, explosives, field tactics, and clone culture—withoutthe shock-drones. But he still can’t square her wanting to spend what sounds like her first night back on Coruscant holed up in a stale barracks box, when he knows damn well the Temple has gardens and pools and shit. Not that he isn’t enjoying their reunion, basking in her bright presence again. 

The hand he’d tossed out to take the datapad now has a new mission: inching towards the soft skin behind her left knee. 

“Then what d’you need me for? Besides my charming company.” He smirks up at her from where he’s resting his cheek on his arm, trying not to stare at the intriguing line of white diamonds running down the front of her legs. He's never seen those before. 

“Well, you’ll need to input on certain subpoints, prohibitions and stuff, since those are more your headache than mine. By the way, isn’t this half-and-half get-up”—she wiggles her finger up and down, indicating his bare blacks and his plated lower half—“unauthorized?” 

He draws his shoulders up in a half-assed shrug. “Demote me, sir,” he taunts. “Sometimes we don’t finish stripping before we crash.”

One white stripe above her right eye darts up as his fingertips graze the warm crease behind her knee. Not breaking the stare, he dares a caress, slow and featherlight, down her calf. So this is what sleep-deprivation and warm breath does to him. Turns him into a loopy, lazy flirt. He hopes she’s game and the way her mouth curls into a wicked grin says she might be. 

“Funny you should say that, Rex. 'Cause I’ll also need you to strip for me.” 

What. 

His fingers stop moving. He must look like a hawkbat in a larty’s headlights the way she sticks out her tongue in amusement at him. 

“Uh, sorry?” he croaks. Barely. 

She waves the datapad in his face. “I want to do this right. Besides glancing over the old armor specs once and watching you guys, my understanding of your kit is really patchy.” 

Yeah, he must have misheard. Too fucking bad. “Just let me do them. You’re bone tired. Go rack out." He thumbs towards the barracks. “Take mine or Fives’s. Or hells, bunk with Tup, kriff knows he could use a hug, and—” 

“Not finished. Anakin says some Padawans might take their Trials sooner thanks to the war. This is exactly sort of minutiae some cranky Master is bound to test me on. And I’m _not_ going to flunk because I don’t know the difference between greaves and polyenes.”

“But you do know the difference between greaves and polyenes.”

“On the old stuff maybe.”

“The new stuff is exactly the same—I mean, it’s not, it’s _shit_ , and you can quote me on that, sir, but it’ll assemble the same way.” 

She rolls her eyes, and by dramatic extension, her whole head. “That’s just it, I don’t know _how_ it assembles.” She starts counting off on her long fingers for emphasis. “I don’t know how you guys kit up so fast; I don’t know how these new plates compare to the old; I don’t know the ins and outs of your bucket tech; I don’t know what’s actually _issued_ in your belts versus what you ruggers collect along the way; and I _definitely_ don’t know how you take a piss in all _that_!” 

“Sir!” he blurts out. He's not a little scandalized, both at her crude talk and because she’s ended her catalogue by pointing a finger at his plated groin. It only reminds him of the halfie he hasn’t been able to shake. 

“ _Demote me_ , Rex,” she snarks, sliding off the table to stand over him. She's close enough that her soft shirt tickles the pale hairs on his forearms. He’d instinctively tried to close his thighs, but, of course, he’d decided to straddle this chair like a _di’kut_ , so now he’s _really_ feeling exposed. And very hot.

And when she squats down, thumps her forefinger _onto his codpiece_ , and locks eyes with him—no hint of a smile, just something like raw determination, the way her face sets like stone when she’s about to decimate some punkass droids with her mind—he swears he nearly cracks the plastoid under her hand. 

“I need to know. How. This. Works,” she says. Each word is punctuated with another tap of her finger that _vibrates_ down his cock, settling someplace real fucking sensitive at the root of his spine. 

There’s not a sound in the room. Except maybe that of straining armor. 

He’s not sure if either of them is even breathing. Well, she probably is. She’s a Jedi, it must be easy to flirt when you can sense emotions in the air and read minds.

Could she read his mind? Actually? What would that feel like? The mindfuckery tickled something behind his left ear. He’d worked that much out from his limited subjections to the stunt: once by Ventress, another time by a _very_ inexperienced Ahsoka, and once later for a joke with his express permission. (No, Fives, he _hadn’t_ consented to the holocam coverage, and _no_ , he wasn’t secretly proud to be the star of the vid with the most hits on the GAR’s cc-channel until that groundbreaking six-second loop of Blitz stumbling upon the apocryphal Kaminoan mating dance blew it out of the water.)

Great, if she is reading his mind, she’ll now have that weird image to chew on.

His voice won’t come. He can’t make words. And he can’t do anything else productive with his mouth because the back of this damn chair is in the way. Bending forward far enough to just kiss her and be done with all this _thinking_ is impossible. 

He reaches around the chair and takes her face in his hands. He draws her up, gently, closing the electric space between them. Her shaky sigh catches in his parted mouth as he grazes his lips against hers before kissing her fully. If this is what she’s been after all along—if he hasn’t just made a complete idiot of himself by misreading her handsy request for a kit assembly demonstration—he allows her a moment to prove it. He holds himself still, deeply breathing in the scent of her he doesn’t have the olfactory vocabulary to describe beyond _toasty_ and _sweet_. 

Air and anticipation mount inside his chest. He steels himself to release her in the next moment, when he’ll apologize for getting distracted, swear he’ll never take liberties again, no sir, and chuck himself into the nearest trash compactor— 

…. andoh _._ Oh _. Thank fuck_. She deepens into his kiss, tilting her jaw in his palms so she can better work his lips with hers. She sucks on them, slowly drawing out his gasp of relief and testing his desire with tiny flicks of her tongue. _Fuck, yes, please_. He inhales sharply and opens under her, aching for her, inviting her tongue to slip into his mouth and dance with his, the taste of tarts and the hot wetness of everything melting thoughts and arousing more than just memories. 

Like first time they’d really kissed (the bubblezap thing, while momentous, didn’t count). It had passed like a hyperreal virtual reality sim, the ones they’d been hooked up to cycle after cycle, after they'd outgrown their tanks, but before they were coordinated enough to be any use with a blaster. That was the only way he could describe it. That was the only reference he’d had to process the novel and overwhelming sensory flood. And when it was all over, he was so alarmingly buzzed, sleepless and trembling like a spice addict, he thought that shiny story about Togruta being venomous might actually be true. If it had been, he’d have died happy. 

But her kiss has a narcotic effect on him all the same. It keys him up. It makes his skull feel too heavy for his neck despite, how blissfully weightless his finely calibrated brain feels when she does that _thing_ , pulsing her tongue in and out of his mouth in a suggestive cadence. It’s filthy, really, what he wants to do (and _where_ ), and something visceral, something raw inside him demands that he reciprocate. He fans his fingers across her cheeks to gather her more into himself as he massages her tongue back. Soon she’s withdrawing altogether, but not before nipping at his lower lip with fangs that feel more mature, more feral, than the last time they did this. The sharp sting thrills him to his core. He ruts forward on instinct and comes up against resistance—her entire hand splayed across his curve of his codpiece. 

And _fuck_ , she’s pushing back, all but encouraging him to grind into her palm. He drops her face and grabs the back of the chair, steadying himself. The armor is unyielding, there’s really no relief to be had in pulsing against her like this, and he knows it. But it’s what he can _imagine_. What he’s so close to achieving that drives him on. What a little bit of mental manipulation can do to make the familiar, and usually unwelcome, feeling of his sensitive head hardening against his blacks into something so much better: his cock bouncing against her hand, against her thigh, against her ass, against her— 

Suddenly there’s no resistance. Shab, he’s probably just pulled a muscle in his groin with that last thrust into the void between the bars of the chair. 

Where’s she gone—? 

He draws his mouth from hers to scatter kisses down her jaw and neck. Nibbling and nuzzling her exposed, receptive throat, he bends his head, casting an eye around for those perfect sienna hands. 

Heh. They’re fingering the edges of his utility belt. Desperately. Blindly. 

So it _wasn’t_ just the request that was handsy, she really was after a hands-on—live-fire? That remains to be seen, but he’s optimistic—demonstration all along. He hasn’t been this excited to give a lesson since the day he walked Torrent and his fellow officers through every dish on the new rotating mess _menu_ the GAR had adopted after a couple of senators argued that they wouldn’t feed such rehydrated rations to their greysor packs. 

A hand other than his own, or that of a helpful brother—not that that couldn’t be aces, but it was really all the same after a while—colorful and curious, sneaking into his blacks and gripping him _hard_. The thought alone is threatening to pop him off… 

He dots a new line of kisses back up the other side of her jaw until his nose grazes the first of her akul teeth. He breathes into the join where her lek meets her cheek, flicking his tongue experimentally into the crease. She shivers, leans into him, and whimpers a little, and it’s all the encouragement he needs to move his hands from his white-knuckle grip on the back of the chair to her elbows. Gently, he guides her back down, continuing to slide his nose up her lek, tooth by tooth, until he reaches the groove between her growing montrals. Her hearing apparatus is admittedly very confusing, and it had taken a stupidly roundabout conversation to get Kix show him some diagrams so he could make educated guesses about okay-for-touching spots, but he does know there’s a very dense and sensitive nervous cluster here. 

“Lesson one,” he whispers onto the smooth plane of her head, trailing his blunt fingertips down her arms, wrapping her restless hands in his. With his thumbs and forefingers, he pinches the top and bottom of both sides of his belt clasp and wiggles them apart. “We’re mostly held together by Rothana magnets. Proper application of force in _just the right places_ , and we come undone.” 

Wow, where did that come from, it was fucking poetic. He should write that down.

“Noted,” she mumbles under his chin, sounding a little breathless herself. He lets her take the weight of the belt. The loose end bumps across the back of his skivvy plate as she draws it round to the front and lets it clatter to the floor between them. “Now for your skirt.” 

If the reproachful _pfffft_ that whisks across her head tickles or irritates her, she had it coming. 

“You know it’s not a skirt. It’s a symbol of rank and valor and protects the legs from heat and shrapnel.” The kama clip releases with a snap, and the weight of it slips from his hips as she pushes it off and down onto the floor. He strokes his forehead against her montrals, their texture so delightfully sleek and alien, like cool shimmersilk pulled taut over an aiwha’s fin.

“So why doesn’t Cody wear one?” she asks.

“Are you kidding? He’s too in love with his thighs.”

She snickers. “Hmm. A valid point.” He can’t feel her hands, only the pressure of them against the plastoid as she strokes up his cuisses towards his lap again. When she slips her fingertips between the top edge of his codplate and his blacks, it sets the sensitive dip between his hips alight with desire. 

“ _Sok-k-ka_ ,” he shudders. He ruts forward again, ignoring the twinge in his left adductor, seeking relief for the agonizing strain in his codpiece. The chances of him making it to lesson two without blowing his load are rapidly dwindling to nill; squirting in your blacks is never pleasant, but he’s already dribbling and soggy enough from sweat that he’ll have to change anyway. She might bite his hand off for trying, but this is _his_ demonstration, and if he wants to bring forward Tactical Realignment of the Firing Line for the sake of time and sanity, he fucking well will—“ _hhhnnnnggg!_ ”

Okay, that was a fucking embarrassing noise. 

She’s definitely reading his mind—that or she has a much better grasp of clone ordnance than he’d guessed, because she’s opted to snake one skinny hand _up_ and _into_ his cod.

His Commander is rearranging him herself. Oh fuck, this can’t be real. This shouldn’t be possible. Trooper hands could never work through that cage of plastoid—because _fuck you_ , no relieving yourself under fire, you’ll die stewing in your own piss before you get frisky in the field. But her deft fingers are maneuvering his hot kad through his straining blacks, working him into a more comfortable upward direction, and honestly, someone should give him a medal. A lesser clone would have shot off ages ago—and he would have too, if his period of depressive abstinence hadn’t come to an end four rotations ago when he’d jerked off, pathetically and violently, to the otherwise pedestrian sound of two troopers smacking one out in the showers. 

He’s cradling her lekku in his open palms, and he belatedly hopes he hadn’t squeezed them in the blinding moment when she’d first touched him. She’s almost certainly experienced better, but maybe his ragged, chewed fingernails still offer some kind of nice sensation as he slowly traces them up and down her headtails, lush and lengthening.

No _,_ no _, no,_ she’s _leaning_ _back_ —and in an instant they’ve slipped from his reach and there’s no pressure against his cock anymore. 

Wait. Was that. The door—?!

“Good morning, sir, I—”

 _Shitttt_. What sithspitting brotherfucker— 

He whips his head round to see which trooper has just gotten his sorry shebs confined to barracks for the rest of leave for plugging his captain’s turret. But the quick-thinking Jedi already has the intruder wrapped in a disarming hug.

“Twix!” she squeals.

Of course it fucking is. 

Of course it wouldn’t be some sensible shiny he could scare shitless, threaten with dismal quarterdeck duties, and chuck out onto his shebs. No. It had to be his wet-droid of a quartermaster who was always found sitting in a crate too close to your fucking _private_ conversation, poring over manifests like a Neimie—not that he could be counted upon to remember any of it. 

At least he was so spacey the Commander wouldn’t need to pull a fast save with the mindfuckery. 

His forehead drops onto the cold metal of the chair. The draft from the corridor has reached his lap, and where two seconds ago there'd been a warm, curious hand, now his groin feels like it’s been jerked out of hyperspace and leaking coolant. 

“You’re back Commander!” comes Twix’s voice. That tone, the carefree, sing-song of a lieutenant who has no idea he’s the most hated man in the company right now, sets his teeth on edge. 

“Sure am and I’m glad I didn’t miss the party. _Rex_ was just showing me how the magnets on your kit works.” 

And he recognizes that tone, too. You spend long enough scrutinizing the same face and listening to disembodied voices in your bucket, you get damn good at decoding meaning in the spaces between words, sighs, and grunts. That’s the tone of a co-conspirator who really wants you to move your shebs and _play the fuck along_. 

There’s a fair chance he’ll snap something—his dick, his groin, Twix’s neck—if he finally shifts out of this compromising straddle, but she’s as good as ordered him to move. There’s nothing for it. He hauls himself up, kicking his legs out like a stuck bug to test their fitness and encourage some circulation around his strangled balls. _Ouch_. 

“That’s right, Lieutenant,” he says as he turns around, a thought striking him through the muddle of choked arousal. “Have you found my bucket yet?” 

“Sir?”

For the love of Fett. He’d never recommend a brother for reconditioning, but if there were ever a trooper to test his resolve, it’d be Twix. 

“MY HELMET, Lieutenant. The one I sent you to find. That’s why you’re here, right?” 

Twix’s brow furrows and he makes pitiful eyes at the Commander, like he expects her to save him. She’s doesn’t really react, just furrows her brow in return as she stands next to him with her hands on her hips; but something must have clicked because his eyes suddenly blow wide in what passes for comprehension with this cargo jockey. 

“I’m sorry, sir, but it isn’t on the manifest,” Twix answers, every inch the unhelpful piece of rear-echelon bantha-fodder he feared. His stomach drops into his boots. “But I’ve brought you a set of new kit,” he says, pulling a hovercart into what space remains in the room. 

Gee, _thanks_.

“And how in Huttspace did that happen?” 

Twix … well, he doesn’t exactly _shrug_ —a shock-worthy offense if there ever was one—but the intent is there. He would if his highly-conditioned muscles would let him. The tensing of Twix’s shoulders and neck and the pursing of his lips into that vacant, phobium-snorting expression makes him want to kick something. Again. 

“It wasn’t approved, sir. Something about Kaminoan armorsmiths not accepting single unit orders.” 

And the lieutenant must think this conversation is over because he turns to the Commander to monologue about the fucking inventory droid’s latest leap in cognitive awareness.

Twix may be as sharp as a beldon’s fart, but the Commander at least tries to steer the conversation back in the appropriate direction. “I promise to say hi to Pine at drill,” she coos, placing a comforting hand on Twix’s spotless gauntlet. “Right now Rex and I need to finish revising the kit regs.” 

Kriffing hell, don’t _encourage_ —

Too late. Twix’s face lights up. “Oh, can I help? Sticky’s had me keeping a list of infractions”—he starts twisting and patting around for the correct datapad out of the _eleven_ clipped to his belt—“I mean, I’m not here to snitch, sir, I always leave off designations—”

That’s it. He has to intervene before the Commander agrees to chair a committee on the blasted new kit and he’s stuck in this closet with Twix and a painful nutload he can do fuckall about. 

“—some sergeant in the 41st told Camp that one of their shinies got too carried away with the unit’s colors. Managed to dye his blacks _green_. Plates adhered just fine, nothing seemed wrong. But when their platoon got sabotaged with some nerve agent on Hapes, his skin bubbled like a Kel-Dor. He died, obviously”—he’s got the heedless lieutenant by the shoulders now, firmly backing him out the door—“so my first suggestion: prohibit the alteration of bodysuits in any manner, as this compromises the their inbuilt defences and may also interfere with the integrity of the gription. Are you getting all this, Commander?” 

“She’s got it, Lieutenant. Now go rack out.” 

Before Twix can even salute, he’s closed the door. He slumps face-first against the plasteel, an all-nighter, bad news, no caff, a kit overhaul, and an unfinished handjob all catching up with him. 

“He’s sweet,” comes Ahsoka’s voice behind him. 

“No, he’s like a bowl of bantha butter,” he corrects her, shuffling past her to the chair and collapsing into it. “So awkward he doesn’t know how to fall.”

“There’s an … unusual abstraction to his mind—like his thoughts eddy around something.” She moves towards him in a preoccupied, Kenobi-kind of way, one hand toying with her chin and the the other stuffed into the opposite armpit. 

“If that’s Jedi for not firing on all thrusters, then yes.”

“How’d he make lieutenant then? Sticky doesn’t tolerate deck birds in his outfit, whatever you may think.” 

You’d tolerate a lot in a junior officer who was only _junior_ because it was your own cockup that got him fucked in the head to begin with. But, like Twix, he’s not here to snitch. Especially not about something he only has suspicions and CRUD to corroborate. So he just shrugs. “He never sleeps—least not where we can see—and he’s efficient enough, in his own way. Requisitions flow through his hands like water … you _did_ sign off on the helmet, right?”

“I sign off on everything you send me, Rex. Doesn’t mean I read it,” she replies, leaning back against the desk and crossing one ankle over the other. “What’s so special about this helmet?”

Everything. It would have been a dream. He twists in his seat and grabs the new helmet he’d picked up in the hangar, feeling his passion divert from rutting his Commander into a wall to the more familiar pastime of griping about _shabla_ kit. 

“I ordered a custom helmet, because _this_ ”—waving it in front of her face—“is a death trap. The visor is all wrong. I couldn’t see a ronto if it came up and kissed me on the mouth. There’s no reassuring heft to it, for all that it looks bulkier. A sham. And, obviously not satisfied with the low turnover of troopers, the longnecks and top brass, in their infinite wisdom, have _vaped the in-built life-support system_ —so sure, it’ll be a lot more fucking obvious when a shiny’s tapping the tank the morning after a piss-up, but it completely defeats the purpose of a self-contained suit.”

Her white brow crests over one eye again. “ _Wow_. Tell me how you really feel, trooper.” 

Okay, he probably does sound like a child. He opts to put the helmet on to hide, taking a moment to get the words out. “I guess the only good thing is that in-atmo respirator and filtration is better … although I’m told you can still smell your wet-bantha brother a klick away.” 

Through the teeth of the bucket, he catches a whiff of her, too, as she pushes off from the desk to come around his side. He cranes his head to follow her face, her montrals haloed by the overhead light, still a vibrant blue… 

“Huh,” he says, shifting his head this way and that to test the angle, “they’ve polarised the lenses.”

“You know, Rexster,” she drawls, coming to stand between his legs, “I actually like it. You sound more … _you_. It’s. Sexy.”

Oh no. Not again. 

He has to keep talking … not to entice her but to … distract himself. With words. That she finds sexy. “Well, uh, I read they also improved the annunciator.”

She reaches out and he presses his head into her hands as they glide along the crest of the helmet. “The fin’s gone too.” 

“Yeah, a self-reverential detail I’m glad was scrapped. The brother blinker was helpful, though.” 

She bends down in front of his nose, supporting herself on the reinforced ridge of his cuisses. Her wide blue eyes dominate his field of vision. The longnecks had had a particular disdain to the color blue he could never understand for a species that inhabited a water world. When he’d first really gazed into hers, deeper than any Kaminoan ocean, and far more peaceful, he’d almost drowned in them. Even through the visor, he's close to drowning now, however dry his mouth feels, sucked under by the weight of her stare. 

And his leaden balls. 

“But, uh, in terms of regulations,” he croaks, settling his eyes where the hem of her white shirt hangs down loosely between them, "let’s scrap standing order two-hundred-seventy-six or whatever that prohibits the application of chassisplasts, flowers, googly eyes, krayt feathers, or anything else that _isn’t kriffing paint_ , and add a specific article to the same— _mmmpfh._ ”

He's cut off as she teases the throat of the helmet up over his chin and mouth. The brush of the neoprene lining over his lips is followed by the soft press of her own. Being kissed while still in the confining darkness of a bucket would be an exciting novelty, were the lining not stuck under his nose. It forces him to gasp through his mouth and into hers. The way she’s sucking and nibbling on his lower lip _begs_ him to relax into her … so he does, slipping a little deeper in his seat with a groan. 

And hardening _again_. 

Without warning, she breaks away and takes the helmet with her. “Cody told me Chopper once rolled up to take down a band of Seppie pirates with ten scalped Weequay braids glued to his helmet,” she says, pointedly examining the bucket, twisting it round in her hands and peering inside it, probably still irritated by her inability to actually try the damn thing on. “I don’t think we have any similar maniacs, but you’re probably right. Better safe than sorry. Although, I _liked_ the flower crown craze,” she adds, leaning over his shoulder to return the helmet to the desk. 

She’s not careful about it—her lek smacks him in the face and it earns her a smack to the shebs … and he lets his hand linger. Surely Kenobi raised her better. She can’t just talk her way out of an aborted snog. 

But the look she levels him with when she falls back again says that might have been a mistake. 

“Stand up.”

That’s an order if he ever heard one, and he doesn’t need convincing. It also reminds him that this really isn’t his lesson anymore—if it ever was. He complies, shakily, dropping his hand from the swell of her backside to assume parade rest. 

At least, until she reaches around to tug at his skivvy plate. “Sir, let me—”

He tries to grab her fingers so he can guide them to the unmarked points where the gription will deactivate. She just slaps him away, but he’s placated with a renewal of the kiss as she leans into him, the softness of her breasts pillowing against his abdomen. 

Beyond the heat of her pressed up against his blacks that’s sending birdbumps down his spine, he feels her test the gription bond, slipping her fingertips inside the top edge of the codplate at his hips, pressing with her thumb while pulling with her forefingers in attempt to leverage it off. It takes her a couple of tries, minutely shifting her thumb in search of the sweet spot, succeeding first on the right side and then on the left. The plate _finally_ releases from his blacks, both a mercy and an imminent embarrassment since the moment this thing slips from his groin, it will be very obvious that he’s standing to attention.

She breaks their kiss with a satisfied squeal as the weight of the plate shifts from his blacks and into her hands. With the way his legs are spread it won’t fall from his narrow hips to the floor, but all the same, she doesn’t drop it.

Instead, this beautiful Jedi kneels down before him, her imperious stare and the downward tug of the plate demanding that he shift his stance just so, allowing her to draw the codpiece down over his sprung cock and his tense thighs, and this is, _without question_ , the hottest thing that’s ever happened to him. Every respectable inch of him twitches to close the gap between his stretched blacks and her playful mouth. 

His mental bank of imagery for shower wanks has just received a significant upgrade. 

Were anyone else baring their teeth in a predatory grin within snapping distance of his dick, he’d be kneeing them in the jaw and beating a hasty retreat. But this is just thrilling, how his most lurid dreams are materializing at a wild rate … in the staff office, of all places. What predilections did Fett fucking have?!

“Care to step out, Captain?” she asks. The skid plate is resting on the floor, trapped between his boots. 

There’s really no trusting his knees right now, so he grips her shoulder for support and steps out one foot at a time. He’s making more of a _di’kut_ of himself with each passing moment, judging by the smirk tugging at her cheeks. Courage tells him to just own the situation and crack a joke before she does. 

“May I also suggest that troopers be reminded that cod armor is to be worn over blacks at all times? And needing ‘a breeze round the _gett’se_ ’ isn’t a valid excuse, _Hardcase_.” 

Her cackle peals round the small room as she holds up the full plate to examine it, and is that really necessary? Nothing would kill the mood quite like realizing your strapping soldiers wore kriffing medical diapers into battle. 

“The thermo sensors could do better in that department, huh?” she remarks, flipping it over in her long fingers and deliberately ignoring the rocket on deck. 

He may be overheating _now_ , but that isn’t the usual state of affairs between his legs. Maybe a bit more often, lately. When she’s around. 

“It can get … balmy. It’s. A snug fit,” he says, hoping to remind her of the fun and responsive contents that plate she’s scrutinizing usually contains. How he’d gone from having her fingers practically curled round his cock to tossing out lame innuendo that would make a cadet cringe, he’ll never know. But one thing is certain: he’s never gonna forgive Twix. 

She flashes him a knowing look, eyes his groin, and slowly draws her tongue across her bared teeth. “You don’t say.” 

And hells, that might have actually worked. She drops the plate and slides her hands up the back of his thighs from where she’s still on her knees in front of him. She leans towards him at an angle so she doesn’t, well, get a mouthful, and starts to poke at the gription on his rear cuisses. The movement brings her left lek against his erection and he has to stiffen and bite his lip to hold himself together. 

“I’m gonna hazard a guess,” she begins, casually ignoring their most intimate contact to date, “that the two troopers I saw about an hour ago with ‘fresh’ and ‘juicy’ stamped on their butts were in contempt of regulations?”

Right, kit regs. Think about rules and manuals and … and how everything about this situation contravenes Article 124 of the GAR code—or was it 125? Fuck if he knows. Echo, poor _vod_ , might have been able to recite regs to the letter while rubbing one out, but that wasn’t a skill he’d ever mastered. Maybe minutely examining the lightswitch on the far wall will help, although trying to mask the lust radiating off him with unconcerned professionalism is probably as convincing as putting a wig on a clanker and calling it a Wookie.

“Yeah, no, that shit is right out. So is ‘enjoy the view’, ‘score’, ‘ _Hukaat’kama_ ’—you get the idea. No words are to be painted on skivvy plates. They can tattoo their shebs instead.”

With a quick jerk that causes him to throw out a hand and inadvertently grab her montral, she pries the plates from his hamstrings. “If I peeled off your blacks, would I find any _cheeky_ remarks?” she asks, every bit Kenobi’s padawan in that moment. 

Aha. The perfect time to get this lesson back on course. 

“See for yourself.” Not daring a glance down, he reaches behind his neck and fingers for the zip. He's xhausted by all this verbal sparring. Having his arousal dragged along a gantry of punny flirtation is far too taxing for oh-four-hundred. Just whipping it out would probably be rude, even if she had _asked_ to see how they took a piss—

And the zip catches.

Wait. No, it’s not the zip, it’s his _arms_. She’s. Frozen him with her mind. 

This isn’t playing dirty, because that would imply mutual participation. He’s really more of a spectator to his own persecution here. This is just … merciless. 

“Cool your jets, Rex, or you’ll be stuck like that.” 

He looks down his nose at where she’s paused in her task to glare reproachfully up at him. As much as he’s straining against the invisible hold, his elbows caught uncomfortably in the air and his hands suspended behind his neck, the unusual dominance she’s exerting over him sends what’s left of the blood in his head surging into his groin. 

They’d been through the prologues of a number of his profane fantasies so far that morning, but before he can encourage the exploration of this one, his arms collapse to his sides and something clatters at his feet. 

All his leg armor is stacked in a pile next to where she’s resting on her heels, her burnished skin taut over her thighs, stretching the corners of those white diamonds. Her eyes settle on his groin two seconds too long to be accidental. She grins up at him with something like approval and draws her hands up his hard calves, into the ticklish groove behind his knees, and over the slopes of his hamstrings to squeeze the tight dip of his waist. When she stands up, never dropping her eyes from his, the throbbing tent in his blacks catches the fabric of her shirt between her breasts and _shitting Siths_ , where’d she learn to be such a tease?!

“Right,” she says, smacking his chest, “now that’s done, let’s get you dressed for drill.”

What. 

He really thought he knew where all this was going, however tediously, but now he’s not so sure. 

She _wouldn’t_. 

This has to fall somewhere under cruel and unusual punishment. Jedi don’t even torture Seppies, yet he’s _dying_ in this small room, suffocating in his blacks on the smell of his own sweat and her toasty scent. He's convinced he’s done permanent damage to his dick with this, the longest hard-on of his short life. 

“Sir?!”

She deactivates the hovercart and bends over it to haul out the new plates. Her snug training shorts ride up, leaving nothing to the imagination as far as the proportions of her ass are concerned. 

“ _Reeeex_ , how many times do I have to remind you,” she sighs, popping up to approach him with a new codpiece that could be a Huttese Iron Thong for all that he wants to wear it, “to cut the military dwang when we’re alone?”

Fine. She’s gonna wish she’d kept him strung up. 

“Okay then,” he says, grabbing her arms before she can resheathe him and continue this sadistic ritual. “If you relinquish command, then technically I’m in charge and I’m _not_ putting that on. I’m gonna pull myself out”—he shoves both her bony wrists into his left hand so he can fiddle with the clammy gription seal over his aching cock with the other—“this is how we do it, by the way, pissing and polishing—and get off right the fuck here, with you in the room or not. Because there’s no way I can walk to the showers.”

She furrows her white brows in a look of mock sympathy. “That bad, huh?”

“Like I’ve offended Dooku’s mother and he’s dispatched Grievous to personally kick me in the balls.”

Don’t ... no. She’s making those alarmingly blue eyes at him with an intensity that might suggest some imminent mindfuckery, if he didn’t know her better. He stares back dumbfounded as she ignores everything he’s just confessed, easily snapping his hold on her wrists to take him in hand, and very _gingerly_ —like she _knows_ live ordnance when she sees it—sockets him into the generous bulge of the new cod. 

“I think you need to trust me,” she says, fixing the plate to his blacks with a rude shove.

“To do _what?!_ ” 

“Reward your patience.”

“But why do I have to kit up?”

“Because I might bite.” 

She says it like it’s a matter of course. A physiological deal-breaker. Like sinking her teeth into him isn’t exactly the sort of rough thrill he fucking needs. His dick is safe inside the plastoid now, the little beast can draw blood wherever she wants, on the fleshy part of his pecs, down his arms, under his jaw...

He’s been aroused for so long, he didn’t think he could get any harder. For all that this new cod is roomier, he’s definitely filled it. 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” 

“It would be. For you.” 

“Mando.” He thumps his chest. “Try me.”

“Don’t tempt a Tog, Rex.” She walks her fingers up his bicep and shoulder until they brush the root of his skull, and she jerks his head down, bringing his ticklish ear level with her hot mouth. “Until my body stops _screaming_ at me to drip-feed paralytic venom into every warm-blooded male I come across, you’re gonna wear the damn armor. I mean, unless you _want_ Coric to drag your punctured corpse outta here and spend the rest of leave in a tank with a hypo up your dick.” 

She releases his neck and cocks her head at him, smiling with all the warmth of an acklay. “ _Tayli’bac,_ Mando-man _?_ ” 

… yup, still hard, especially with that unexpected Mando’a rolling off her pretty tongue. But fair point about the hypo.

And if she really does intend to … to _wreck him_ like that—yes, _please_ , where does he sign up—he wants to ride it out over hours. Days even, leaving his rank, caution, and better judgment outside a treble-locked door, and getting mauled on top of some soft shit. He doesn't want to waste it on a quickie in a glorified closet. 

He gives a firm nod. “ _Elek_.”

She grins like a rabid tooka and grabs the new armor, returning to her knees in front of him again to slap on the plates, naming them out loud as she goes like she’s still committed to this kit-demonstration farce. It’s much faster going than stripping, thank all the gods. The gription is so eager to adhere, it practically pulls the plates in place, leaving little for a trooper—or in this case a handsy Togruta—to do but line up a few microfasteners. 

The act of kitting up and the related anticipation of action usually resulted in a heady surge of testosterone and adrenaline. But he’s been keyed up for so long, she’s probably been tasting it in the air all night. Maybe that’s what’s making her so … savage.

“Now you gotta admit,” she says, breaking the excited silence as she forcibly spins him around, “that not having a plastoid bar between your thighs is an improvement?” 

“I won’t miss the chafe.”

“So you’ll keep this new, um, codpiece?”

“Probably.” And she makes an approving sort of noise, almost a _purr_ , if he’s not imagining things. 

She has to test the relation of the new skivvy and back plates, clapping them awkwardly together a couple of times before he feels them seal to his blacks. Then she spins him back around again to fasten the ab plate, before dragging the kama off the floor and clipping its satisfying weight to his waist. The discarded utility belt is still lying where it’d been kicked under the chair. She pops it over his hips in a hurry, wasting no time now that _she’s_ properly amped up on _his_ hormones and feeling frisky. 

For all that his blacks are drenched in sweat and weighing him down, he can certainly feel how much lighter these new torso plates are. It’s not reassuring—all cushioned air, no substance. The plating around his lower ribs isn’t sitting right either. If he has to take the trouble of welding and rewiring his own damn helmet, then he’ll make a few adjustments to the chest, too. And forget this _shabla_ backplate with its lack of life-support, he’s a certified ARC and he’ll continue traversing alien terrain in denser plates at top speed, fuck you very much. 

He’s so busy reworking his kit in his head, he doesn't realize she’s halfway plated his arms until she snaps his braces on and steps back, looking around the room for something. 

“Where are your gloves?” 

“On my bunk.” 

“Then I guess these will have to wait,” she says, tossing two small pieces into the hovercart. “Is it true that commandos have vibroblades in their knuckle plates?” 

“Yes.”

“Wizard. Why don’t you get them?”

“One, because we’re not designed or trained to get that close to the enemy—that’s your job. Two, their enemy is usually an organic, and a vibroblade does a hell of a lot more damage to a wet than a droid. And three, would _you_ trust Hardcase with a knife attached to his kriffing hand?”

“Yikes.”

“And while we’re on the subject, a ban on using vibroblades of any kind to open bottles of bubblezap should also go in the new regs. We’ve had two troopers lose an eye and a third got his front teeth knocked out.” 

“But that’s the best part about bubblezap!” she whines from behind him and slides the helmet over his eyes before he can object. 

He peers down through the useless visor at what he can see of himself, rotating his shoulders under a new pauldron that certainly has a better distribution of weight, but otherwise unmoved by the updated gear.

“I don’t like it.” 

She walks backwards to appraise him. “I think you look nice…” 

He blinks idly through various displays in the HUD until he hits thermal— 

And holy fuck, she’s on _fire?!_

The confluence of her legs is glowing nearly white with heat. Sure, Togs run hotter than humans, but that … that can’t be normal.

“... but you could definitely use some color, Rexster.” 

He’d sometimes wondered if prolonged exposure to a Jedi could result in some rudimentary … well, if not _Force-sensitivity_ then something approaching precognition, because he swears he feels gravity ripple round him before he falls backwards into the chair. 

She honestly didn’t have to _push_. He was so beat, he’d have collapsed in the next ten seconds under his own exhaustion.

But the fact that his arms weigh a fuckton and his feet are drilled to the duracrete floor say something is _very_ different about this third ride in the hotseat … and the bewitching roll of her hips as she approaches him, like she’s had tutelage from dancers at 79’s, and the gape of her mouth, fangs bared to taste the saturated air, say he’s right. 

Then she shimmies out of her shorts and chucks them over her shoulder. 

What 

the fuck 

_happened_

in that jungle.

She’ll … she’ll let him remove this helmet, right? _Right?!_

Oh, the inhumanity of making him wear it. It’d be the worst yet in a long series of insults that began when she got poached because it’s _her_. 

Hecan’t see for _shit_ , can’t blink off the infrared fast enough to catch anything more of her … whatever lady Togs have between their legs—for all that he’s been to 79’s and worse, he still doesn’t _really_ know—than an ethereal glow, like she’s some angel of sexual mercy, before she climbs into his lap. 

Her slender thighs bracket his hips and her bony knees shove his immobile arms aside as she straddles him— 

And _oh fuuuck_ , he’s going to black out/pass out/tap out because the press of her hand against the old skeletal diaper was nothing, _nothing_ compared to the weight of her pelvis bearing down upon this new cod, cupping his swollen balls and durasteel dick. 

His body tries to rut up. Everything inside him aches to spear himself into this eye-watering sensation until he burns as white as her, but she’s still restraining him with her fuckdamn _mind_. 

He’s helpless. Imprisoned underneath her. She’s not even _moving_ yet, just sitting there, like she’s waiting for his cod to warm to her liking. She slides her hands up and down the ridges of his chest plate as he gasps for air, heaving at the very thought of her hot sex spreading over the plastoid. 

“Please, Soka. _Please_ ,” he rasps, willing her in some desperate reverse mind trick to release him. Even just remove the helmet so he can properly drink in the sight of—

And the _loud_ , indecent groan that starts from somewhere between his left nut and his prostate, and shatters up through his lungs when she _thrusts_ against him has probably just alerted every trooper from Torrent to Quasar that their senior captain is getting his shebs fucking handed to him in the staff office. 

With his helmet on. Like a kinky _verd_. 

“Sounds like that,” comes her muffled, breathless voice from where her face is shoved into the crease between his helmet and pauldron, “are why you’re wearing this armor.” 

He can only just piece that logic together. His mind has all the consistency of boiled mealgrain now that she’s writhing on top of him. 

The plastoid pulses against his leaking, throbbing head. It's probably gone all roony from the precome it’s been stewing in. She’s got one arm thrown around his neck and her other bicep stuffed into his armpit. Her fingernails brush against the root of his skull where she’s gripped the top edge of his back plate for purchase. 

The chair squeaks as she rocks back and forth, rolling down upon him like a wave that chokes him with tides of exquisite pain. 

He’s rutted into a pillow before—which lonely, confused _vod_ hadn’t?—scrunching it up under his volatile, whipcord frame and pounding for the Republic into the lump. But every movement of his feverish commander against his plated body, every languid swell of her hips atop his armor feels so much hungrier, so much more passionate, like the first intimate performance of a dance she’s rehearsed alone. 

There’s no going back from this. 

No going back to the feeble spring of a mattress or the familiar pressure of a hand. Much less to the stupid pretence of being colleagues and nothing more when she rolls out of his bunk in the morning and he turns to the wall, drawing himself and his stupid greed out with heavy, hopeful strokes. This is all he ever wants: _her_ , pliant and keening— _stars, the noises she makes_ —as she grinds into him, around him, like she would consume him if she could.

And beneath the squeaks of the chair and her own rhythmic shrills, beyond the pounding roar of blood in his ears as he mounts towards release, is … the most delicious, carnal sound. 

The faint squelching of a lady Tog pleasuring herself on the bulge of his cod, blunt, solid, and slicked with her own arousal. 

His HUD’s been going haywire for minutes now, translating his careening biochemistry into vitals that flash wildly beyond his eyelids. It’s not until his helmet actually beeps in warning that he realizes he’s been holding his breath, straining to catch every audible hint as to what’s happening between her legs. 

Yeah, yeah, he _knows_ he’s dying, this Tog is going to kill him even without her venom. They can just dunk his frozen, nutted corpse in bronzium and install him in some public park to dry in the sunshine, with a plaque about how the noble captain died in service to the Jedi ( _All Gave Some, Captain Rex Gave All. Literally. Bloke Was Bone Dry When We Found Him_ ). 

It’s not the _shabla_ visor that prevents him from seeing now, it’s her bony shoulder stuck underneath his chin. So instead he just imagines the most beautiful picture of her saturated sex—lots of folds? multiple orifices? something wriggly if he’s lucky—creaming around his rigid kad as he thrusts deep— 

And.

He detonates. 

Like he’s been sitting on fucking grenades.

Brutal, hot, and shattering, the excruciating relief of it makes his goddamn _eyes_ burn. For a moment, he sees nothing but white, like he’s been blinded by his own ejaculate—not that they hadn’t all been warned about that by some of the more twisted _cuy’val_ dicks. It shoots out in scorching pulses, soaking his right thigh and dribbling down into his skid. 

Every Basic, Kamando’an, and Huttese curse he’s picked up from Skywalker erupts from him in one protracted, babbling moan as the aftershocks rip through his frame and he convulses like a fried clanker in his seat. There’s no telling how his hands came to be wedged into the firm crease where her thighs meet her hips to drive her down on top of him, unless— 

Did … did his own climax just overpower the fucking Force—?

But then his torso plates feel ten sizes too tight. His helmet picks up a strange frequency that’s well beyond his own hearing range. And dets for _gett’se_ or no, there’s no way that’s _him_ driving the chair backwards into the desk— 

 

—and slamming into the wall?! 

What the fuck. 

He tries to verbalize that but he’s pretty sure only “fUck k k” comes out. 

Or maybe that was her.

If his own obscene noises hadn’t woken the barracks, the ruckus of metal furniture crashing into a plasteel wall, sending upwards of a hundred datapads and one fully-armored trooper clattering to the ground, definitely would. 

Not that he regards that with anything like concern as he rides out the rest of his euphoria from where he’s prone on the floor. 

The damn chair is gone, and he can _move_ , and it’s a fucking fabulous time to be captain in the Grand Army of the Republic. 

 

“Rex?!”

His bucket is popped off. He takes his first unfiltered breath in what feels like two rotations. 

But that damn light is stupidly bright at this angle.

“ _Rex?!_ Talk to me Rex.” A few slaps to his face and he squints reluctantly at the dark form kneeling on either side of his chest. “Can you move? Oh _shfat_ , I’ve broken you. I’ve _broken_ you, haven’t I?! This—this can’t be happening.” 

What’s she on about? 

Sure, he feels like he’s been punted the length of the _Resolute_ by one of those commando tweezers, but he’s also still reeling from the one of the best climaxes of his accelerated life. Why does she want him to move. 

“‘m fine,” he grunts. “… the fuck happened?” 

“Oh kriff, I don’t _know_ ,” she whines, like she very much _does_ know and finds the knowledge irritating. “No, you don’t sound fine—”

She shoves off his chest as if to call for help. Kix coming in here to laugh at him because his Jedi just took him for a forceful ride is absolutely the _last_ thing he needs right now. He has the presence of mind to grab her ankles before she can dart off, and as she sways in place over him, her montrals fall directly in front of the offensive glare of the light— 

And he finds himself staring up into the carnage of a Togrutan orgasm. 

It’s oozing down the inside of her sienna thighs and it’s … _blue_. 

Not watery and pale but fucking _regimental_ , like she’d swiped a paint tube from the boys and stuffed it up her … her _besh_ (and it’s there alright, he can finally see it, dark and engorged, but the _blue!_ ) and squeezed it out all over… 

Without letting go of her ankles, he rolls up onto his elbows to find his own cod painted for the 501st. 

_Mess_ indeed, Kix, you filthy _mir’sheb_ —what other fucking pertinent physiological information was he withholding for shits and giggles?

He can only just drag his eyes from the captivating sight, up the long stretch of her soaked legs to where that same blue _glows_ in thick ribbons across her lekku. He finally meets her best sabacc stare.

“You _cannot_ leave like that,” he rasps, his mouth as dry as a Tatooine promise. 

She visibly relaxes, probably relieved to see he still has use of his spine, and drops into a squat on top of his stomach, making a mess there too. 

“What, and let ‘em all see how you welcome home your commander?” She runs two fingers along her thigh to wipe up some of the slick and bops him on the nose. She slides them down and onto his lower lip, holding them there as the clawing scent of her pleasure makes him glad he’s already lying down. “Wouldn’t you like that?” 

She cocks a fearless brow at him, daring him to disagree … or to swallow his petty possessiveness and take her into his mouth. 

And he does. By all the gods, he does. 

He slides his tongue out to draw her into him, meeting her heavy gaze as he licks over her knuckles and darts into the soft crease between them. She’s sticky at first, but the warmth of his mouth melts the blue nectar from her skin, and the sweetness pools over his tongue, collecting in the back of his throat. He swallows it, slow as you like, making sure she feels it when he does, sucking hard enough around her fingers to elicit a gasp. 

It’s not _surprise_ —at least it shouldn’t be. This isn’t his first rodeo and she’s observant enough to know it. And there's also the matter of what happened that night when the gift exchange deteriorated into _haat ra gett’se_ and that selfsame bubblezap bottle ended up between her thighs… 

He locks her with the same daring stare he’d employed then, when he’d pulsed his lips around the glass neck and watched her blue eyes blow black. There’d been an audience that night. Now it was just them. 

He flirts with the radical idea of skipping drill as he nurses her fingertips deep into his mouth one final time. Then he purses his lips firmly to squeeze every last trace of her juice from her skin when she slowly pulls them out again. 

“But no … I’d better not,” she finally admits, rather shakily, and it’s gratifying to see _her_ flustered for once this karkin’ morning. 

She levitates her discarded shorts across the room with one hand and hurriedly scrapes the rest of her slick from her thighs with the other, plastering it on his chestplate in broad strokes. Nice. 

He’s on the point of offering to lick off the stain a little higher up when there’s that telltale click of the door—

“Sir? What was all that—”

_“TWIX!!”_

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Twix hadn’t racked out. At least not like the Captain meant. 

Someone is shaking his shoulder. He blinks his eyes open to find his head in Kix’s lap, not entirely sure what he’s doing there, since he could swear he’d been on his way to break the bad news about the helmet to the Captain. 

“Welcome back, Twix,” Jesse says to him from where he and like ten other brothers have their ears pressed against a wall. Hardcase is shaking with silent laughter into Tup’s back. 

“Hey,” he whispers, since everyone else looks really conspiratorial. "Where’s the Captain?” 

“Where you left him last time,” says Kix. 

Twix ponders this for a second. “No, he’s not in the hangar. I’ve just been there.”

Kix doesn’t look down at him. He just sighs and draws up his index finger and makes a show of jabbing it into the wall above Twix’s nose. “Listen.” 

He does. There’s a very faint rhythmic squeaking. And what sounds like the cry of a solitary weedgull on the wing somewhere.

“I can’t believe Fives is missing this,” sighs Jesse, “he was the first to twig her sneaking around the ventilation ducts and _now_ , when they’re _finally_ at it like profoggs...”

It hits Twix like a duracrete wall that they’re all listening someone fornicating when they could be sleeping. 

Which means it’s someone important—almost certainly an officer, probably the Captain. 

“Hey,” says Coric, “at least they’ll be a big pot waiting for him when he gets out. He better fucking share, that’s all I’m saying.”

“And Rex better fucking _hurry up_ or he’s gonna be stuck until—” begins Kix, but he’s interrupted by a muffled string of throaty expletives from the other side of the wall that has him going “oh shit!” and squishing his entire face against the plasteel, as if to push through and peep inside. 

“ _Stuck_?” asks Twix, suddenly concerned by the medic’s turn of phrase.

But that just earns him Kix’s hand shoved over his mouth until he hears something even more alarming. 

_T H W A C K K K ! ! !_

The wall that everyone’s pressed up against rattles from a crash in the adjacent room. Twix feels the vibration in Kix’s knees before he shoots up and almost nails the medic’s chin as Kix pushes back from the wall in shock. 

Everyone just gawps at each other for a minute, the silence punctuated by the metallic _clack-clack-clack_ of datapads cascading to the floor like so much shrapnel next door. 

“Th—that didn’t sound good,” says Jesse. 

“Do you think they broke the chair?” asks Hardcase.

“I think they broke the sound barrier,” answers Kix before his eyes land on Twix. “Twixy here should probably go make sure our brave Captain and Commander are still dirtside.” 

The Commander?

“Commander Tano is back? Why didn’t anyone say so?” he says, rocketing up onto his feet, his brain trying to catch up with this succession of intelligence as Kix moans something to a shiny about “unplugging the droid.” 

“Oh, Twix, who’dya think the Captain would be humoring in the staff office at this stupid hour?” asks Tup as Twix moves past him.

“Well, I don’t care, but I’m sure there’s been some kind of accident,” he says over his shoulder. He nearly jogs out of the bunkroom and without hesitation palms open the door to the office. 

“Sir? What was all that—”

And he notices a number of things at once— 

 

The room’s a fucking mess, datapads everywhere and a large dent in the far wall. 

The Commander is definitely here and she’s not wearing much.

The Captain is lying on the floor covered in paint. 

And they’re both shouting at him. 

 

He really doesn’t know what to do or where to look, so he just drops his head. His boot has knocked against something. It’s the Captain’s silly mug, doing stars know what on the ground. 

He picks it up and starts when he finds the Commander in front of him as he straightens up again. 

“Uh, welcome home, sir,” he says. She’s scrutinizing him with those bright blue eyes, and it makes him feel guilty, though he’s unsure why. 

But then her glare melts into a wide smile. “Good to see you again, Twix.” 

She smacks him affectionately on the spaulder with one hand and presses the mug he’s holding against his chest with the other. “Good idea, the Captain could probably use a caff.” 

She walks out into the hallway but turns around to indicate casually in the Captain’s direction. “Oh, and maybe a towel too? He’s made a real mess with his paintjob.” 

**Author's Note:**

> CRUD = Close-Range Unidentified Dialogue, i.e. comm chatter that can't be placed when you're in the field in close formation or you're passing through a busy hangar; the rumor mill
> 
> [Twix](http://countessofbiscuit.tumblr.com/tagged/twix) had a rough time at Muunilinst and the following month Torrent had a "spacey" quartermaster added to their muster. Has he been reconditioned? Is he just defective? Is he perennially blitzed? Stay tuned. 
> 
> “A breeze round the getts'se” goes to [kaasknot](http://kaasknot.tumblr.com/post/146026958279/a-list-of-66-things-trooper-hardcase-is-no-longer), who also kindly advised on “haat re gett’se” (Mando'a Truth or Dare, lit. “courage or balls”).


End file.
